Dear HumanDHS Friends

From: Barbara Schacht Randall

Please join hands & hearts once again with our indigenous peoples of NT Australia and SIGN THIS NEW PETITION! The Minister of Aboriginal Affairs is dodging accountability for human rights, trying to slip through a vote tonight, avoiding legislative review by the Parliament’s own Human Rights Committee. The Minister is ignoring the pleas of 43,000 of us from around the world who signed a petition asking the government to respect the wisdom and wishes of the elders who do not want this legislation. These elders say its implementation would herald the end of their 40,000 year + continuing culture.

This is the same culture that is increasingly sought by thousands of tourists and seekers longing for knowledge and wisdom of how to live in spiritual, environmental, and social harmony. It is our planets great loss each time an elder passes. It is an irrevocable tragedy to allow indigenous culture to be overruled and destroyed by those who assume authority over peoples living with love & responsibility for all life which government authorities seem to know little about. The government is showing itself to the world-we have only to listen to see that it supports destructive control over the earth’s wisdom keepers. This is a global loss we cannot afford!

It’s our responsibility to preserve what we can of the planet for our children and generations to come. Once it’s gone, we cannot bring the culture of wisdom ways back through books and movies. Wisdom is an evolutionary process, nurtured in the hearts of the elders and kept vital in the moment by moment actions of teachings handed down to the children.

Our complacency about indigenous rights will have catastrophic consequences for all life on the planet. We’ve made mistakes in the past, on every continent and now we have opportunity to make things right. Let’s refuse to contribute to the destruction of those who hold the key to wisdom ways of living in peace and harmony.

I have learned many things living here with an Anangu elder at Mutitjulu, a small poverty-stricken Aboriginal community of Anangu people. We live right beside the great monolith, Uluru, one of the biggest tourist attractions in the world, where the contrast between modern and ancient cultures is striking. It is here where the greatest caring and sharing of the old ways is hanging by a thin thread of the indomitable spirit of just a few remaining elders.

The teachings are simple, yet eloquent. I have learned that when you get lost in the bush, you follow your tracks back to the place where you went the wrong way. In Anangu culture, there are only 2 paths-2 choices of ways of being: right way (the way of “kanyini”/love with responsibility) and not-right way. The elders keep and guide all to live right way-the way of joy, health and peace for all life. This is the path I want for my children’s children and their children. Each of us must choose which path we walk. We do not need to be lost. Larry Littlebird, of the Laguna/Santo Domingo Pueblos, New Mexico, teaches about “Walking backward into the future.” The footprints of our ancestors are there. The elders are here now, waiting for us. It’s up to each one of us to choose.

Link to petition:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Indigenous_Human_Rights/?baTxebb&v=15418